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(12/11/19 5:00am)
The University promotes its precept system substantially in its marketing towards prospective students, noting on its admissions webpage that “the precept provides an open forum in which students are encouraged to voice their opinions and challenge those of their peers.” However, there are two traps that can easily doom the experience of a precept. One of these is having an excessive number of students in the precept itself. Another is a deviation from the aim most suitable for a precept in relation to the course’s content, a key example being a failure go beyond a review of readings and lectures.
(11/25/19 2:59am)
Fire safety inspections are an inconvenient but critical reality on college campuses. Just one person committing a serious violation — for example, removing the proper signage on “means of egress” — could put the lives of all of a building’s occupants in danger.
(11/13/19 2:44am)
As the University begins to increase its undergraduate student population in the upcoming years, it will naturally have to hire more faculty if it wishes to keep the same student-to-faculty ratio. When hiring new professors, the University should acknowledge the clear benefits that seminar-style courses have over lecture-based ones, and accordingly, hire more professors than would be needed to merely maintain the student-to-faculty ratio.
(11/06/19 1:59am)
The University is home to over 300 student organizations, with plenty of students also participating in off-campus opportunities they find enriching during the academic year. The desire to have extracurricular activities is a great one, and one that the University should continue to encourage. What needs to change are some of the excessive ways in which students try to promote their clubs, events, and businesses.
(09/25/19 3:28am)
The spring junior paper (JP) is the first experience many students have with independent work while at the University. While the JP may be intended to function as a precursor to the eventual senior thesis, the lack of course credit for this work diminishes much of the value which the JP could potentially offer. Increasing the length of the JP, while also ensuring it counts for one course credit, would enable students to take three courses in their junior spring, hence letting them produce higher quality work for the paper.
(05/02/19 3:55am)
It is no surprise that sharing a bathroom with many people is less than ideal. What makes it even worse is when none of the users have any enforced responsibility to ensure that the bathroom stays presentable.
(05/01/19 4:22am)
It is no surprise to find dorm buildings in poor condition Sunday mornings, be it trash left around the bathrooms, vomit in the hallways, or beer cans and cups forming a path to Prospect Avenue. Yet, the morning of Sunday, April 7, was particularly disgusting. Throughout the “Slums,” the level of disarray was so extreme, it was a safety hazard.
(04/30/19 1:23am)
One of the earliest warnings students get during their first-year orientation is the prospect of receiving a fine for committing a fire safety violation. The risk of increased financial burden is meant to dissuade students from violating the fire safety policies at the University. Fines, however, not only disproportionately impact lower income students but also are not the best method for preventing continued violations of the fire safety code. Instead, we should use a community service based system to better discourage these violations as well as make the punishment more equal across the board.
(04/10/19 3:54am)
On the University’s admission website, the first academic topic to explore is: “What does liberal arts mean?” In this section, the University argues that by exploring issues, ideas, and methods across the humanities, the arts, the natural sciences, and the social sciences, students will learn to read critically, write analytically, and think broadly. The University hopes its general education requirements will ensure that students take courses across many academic disciplines. I argue that these requirements are a one-size-fits-all answer to the question of how to create well-rounded learners.
(03/27/19 1:46am)
A cornerstone of the college experience is receiving a freshman housing assignment and learning to live with people you have never met in an entirely new location. Conversely, another key component of college is finally getting to make choices about with whom you are going to the room, where you are going to room, and, at this University, whether or not you would elect to live in substance-free housing. Yet our substance-free housing system is flawed because it intersperses substance-free and substance-permitting rooms, negating nearly all of the benefits that substance-free housing is supposed to offer.
(02/22/19 2:06am)
“Do we really need opinion sections?” This is a question I ask myself on a biweekly basis when I sit down to write my column contributions for The Daily Princetonian. I also ask myself this question when reading other op-eds from both the ‘Prince’ and national media outlets. Occasionally, I will see a column so poorly written, or advocating for such a ridiculous or heinous idea, that I begin to wonder if it would have been better had this piece not been published.
(02/08/19 4:30am)
We are in the middle of winter, and it is no secret that the University is hesitant to cancel class during dangerous weather.
(12/07/18 1:58am)
A common class schedule students will have, based on the structure of most University courses, is two 50-minute classes per day, Monday through Thursday. This schedule features two serious flaws: It creates barely usable downtime between classes, and it can cause organizational issues in regard to precepts. A solution to both problems would be the University offering more 100-minute courses that meet once a week so students could more often have just one 100-minute class per day.
(11/20/18 1:32am)
We have now entered the pass/D/fail selection period. If students take a class based on PDF grading and receive a C-minus or above, they receive a P for “pass.” If they fail, they receive an F. If they receive a D, they pass but do not receive a P. In an Undergraduate Announcement article, the University explained the purpose of the PDF grading option: “The intent of the pass/D/fail option is to encourage exploration and experimentation in curricular areas in which the student may have had little or no previous experience. The pass/D/fail option also may be used by the student in completing distribution courses.”
(10/31/18 9:59pm)
With the University’s gothic architecture, six distinct colleges, elite reputation, and centuries-old history, the fact that we have a train which runs directly onto campus may seem reminiscent of the Hogwarts Express from the “Harry Potter” films. Yet as those of us who have had to make extensive use of the Dinky or other local trains know, New Jersey Transit is anything but magical. In fact, it is quite literally one of the worst public transportation systems in the country, with the second most train breakdowns and sixth most for buses. The New Jersey state government can release as many audits and recommendations as it wishes, but NJ transit’s trustworthiness is broken beyond repair.
(10/12/18 2:22am)
One of the most frustrating conversations a politically engaged citizen can have is encouraging a friend or family member to vote and getting the classic “my vote doesn’t matter” response. What rebuttal do we subsequently offer these people? “Well, if everyone who said that voted, they could actually make a difference.”
(09/25/18 12:12am)
If someone asked you, off the top of your head, to describe the wildlife you see at our University, you would undoubtedly think of the seemingly ever-increasing squirrel population. From day to day we tend to pay them little mind, unless of course you happen to spot a black squirrel on your way to class. You may be surprised, however, to learn that our little neighbors are quite literally living in trash. The culprit of their dangerous and unsanitary housing predicament is clear: uncovered trash cans around campus.
(04/26/18 3:41am)
If Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge’s new baby had a mysterious medical condition and doctors thought it was going to die, it is almost certain the royal parents would be allowed to exhaust every available method, anywhere in the world, to try and save their baby’s life. Unfortunately, the United Kingdom does not afford that same right to its common citizens and so today the life of two-year-old Alfie Evans hangs in the balance. He suffers from a degenerative brain condition, and his British doctors think he will soon pass away. Instead of letting the boy’s parents take him to Rome to seek further medical treatment, his British hospital is currently starving him to death.
(04/18/18 12:52am)
As we enter room draw and draw times are released, many will find that their draw time(s) are at inconvenient hours, specifically from 9 a.m. through 7 p.m. on weekdays. During these hours, most students will either be in lecture, lab, precept, or another prior commitment, creating a high likelihood of conflict. Facing this inconvenience, many students feel forced to get proxies to cover for them during their draw time. A proxy is another University student who can select a room for you during your designated draw time. Finding a proxy can be inconvenient and stressful, and it is only necessary because of the larger issue of room draw taking place during the middle of the week. But as I will show, this nuisance can be prevented through simple policy changes.
(04/04/18 1:49am)
The University needs to be more willing to cancel classes in the event of inclement weather. Waiting until the weather is so bad that it is dangerous to navigate campus poses a great risk to the safety of students and faculty alike. The University’s Emergency Management website tells students to stay indoors during a winter storm, but we cannot do that if it means missing mandatory classes, nor should we need to choose between attending non-mandatory lectures and our safety.